March 2011 - Gary Steffes

My definition: Christ said "But the greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled, and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted" (Matthew 23:11-12). Jesus, the Creator of the universe, the One who holds the universe in the span of His fingers, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Alpha and the Omega, the One who calls the beginning from the end, came not to be served but to serve (Matthew 20:28). Who doesnt want to be great? God created us for greatness: counting others more significant than ourselves and not merely looking out for our own interests but also the interests of others. (Phil. 2:2-5).

Favorite Scripture verse: This is super tough. Lord knows I can't exalt one above another. Here is one that really speaks to me. Acts 20:24: "But I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself, so that I may finish my course and the ministry which I recieved from the Lord Jesus, to testify solemnly of the gospel of the grace of God."
I joyfully give up my life that this gospel of grace, this message of our Saviour might save just one more soul. Look at what Jesus has done for us! We are messengers of the greatest news in all the world! It is a priviledge to be called to such a purpose. This verse drives my life. If we really believe Jesus Christ is "the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and no one gets to the Father except thru Him" (John 14:6) we should be screaming "the gospel of the grace of God" in both word and deed to the people God has put in our life wherever and however we can.

What else should we know about you? I have nothing to boast in. My Saviour is it. Worship Him. Fall in love with Him. Love others as He loves us. Join Him in being a hero to this world. May God strengthen you in His grace to know His love, receive it, and proclaim it in both word and deed to this world! In Jesus Name. Amen. God bless you.

nothing of the ontological stutas of "the truth" or "the principle." We may for that reason call this the epistemological interpretation. The more ambitious, and also for some the more appealing, interpretation attempts, on the other hand, to give an existential priority to "the truth" or "the principle": it is no longer a mere epistemological condition, but a truly ontological entity (permit me to use this troublesome word) which in some way infuses the potential knower, so as to make him capable of knowing the truth. Not only an ontological entity: but also a self-conscious and self enacting one. Otherwise we can very well fancy that it were nothing but Energy. Some prefer calling it God, some prefer calling it Geist: the name matters not. At the heart of this ontological interpretation of the proposed view seems to be an urge to see the self as part of a larger self: the self is "enabled" to know not because of some past training or experience (all which seems to point back to the self--its will in particular--as the ultimate cause), but because of a prior self, a larger self, that has realized its inherent capability to know in this particular instance, viz. through this particular self. On the first interpretation, the self need not submit to anything; but on the present one, it is already (in a sense) in submission to that larger self. Karl Barth, inspired by a reading of St. Anselm, came to recognize that the ontological must be prior to the epistemological. God is, and man can only start thinking about God by putting himself already in God. Yet in a way his impassioned arguments in the Church Dogmatics for this point seems to intimate little more than the common observation that "If you believe, you believe; if not, no one can lead you thereto by arguments."Of course, the broader thought that the capacity to know always presupposes (or requires) something prior has long been a major theme in philosophy. The Holy Trinity of Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger all play with this thought in one way or another. The hard part is, nevertheless, to describe clearly and meaningfully what that "prior" is (so for instance, what is Sittlichkeit? or Horizon? or Sein?) What, moreover, is the relationship between my little self and that "prior," and how am I to "know myself" in relationship thereto, and live in the light, or pale, of it?If 倉海君 meant to favor the ontological interpretation (and I think he did), echoed in zeke's allusion to the notion of Emanation in antiquity, it may be proper to say, then, that they take the injunction "Know Thyself" not as an injunction to know the peculiarities of the little self, as are frequently and meticulously investigated by psychological tests in pop magazines; but as an injunction to look beyond the self and to see it--to recognize it--in the light or pale of that larger self. To know thyself becomes to know the limits of an isolated, unencumbered self (to adopt Sandel's nice phrase against Rawls): to know that there is more to know, and more urgently to be known, than the vagaries of this I. On a day to day level, this may point to one's friends and relatives, communities, etc.; more elevatedly, it may point to transcendence, the desire to reconnect oneself to the Beyond and the Before, and the aspiration to look back, from that position, at this humble little self. Some say that this desire is deeply rooted in the complicated neural network of human beings, the complexity allowing them to enter trance experiences, the remnant--or recollection--of which well sedimented as the desire of transcendence in certain moments of everyday life. But for the present discussion, let me go no further into this controversial subject.